


The taste in the air

by Nagiru



Series: CLAMP related drabbles [10]
Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Alcohol, And angsty, Gen, really really short, sake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 14:06:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13953189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagiru/pseuds/Nagiru
Summary: ... reminds me of your lips.The bottle is empty. It's not about the bottle anymore. It never was.





	The taste in the air

**Author's Note:**

> This is the last one I've translated at this point in time, so the next ones should take a while yet. Still, this is the first Holic story I've written, so I hope you like it.
> 
> Also, this story was originally written in first person, but when translating I changed it into a 3rd person story. I'm sorry if it's awkward?

 

The smell in the air was strong, potent. Bittersweet and venomous; a smell that brought him tears to the eyes with its acridness, and nostalgia to his tongue with its sweetness. There was a touch of alcohol, the ghost of a smoke, and the imagination of a flower.

The bottle was still empty.

It was a pretty enough, normal enough, _she_ enough bottle. It sat quiet, silent and cold on the floor, and he kept staring at her, the smell of alcohol burning in his blood. _Sake_.

Ironically.

This had been the last bottle he had served her, without ever imagining that the end was near. He had complained, he knew, despite the exact words escaping his mind now; he had said something about not being her servant. And she, sat with her glass raised, had only smiled, that small, omniscient smile of one who knows everything and tells nothing, a silent laugh in the air.

A silent laugh. A silence that seemed to drown him, now.

There was no life in the Shop anymore. Mokona tried; Maru and Moro tried. Neither of them were _her_ , however, and for all that Mokona still yelled for sake, there was no smoke in the air, there were no kimonos besides his own ( _hers. Borrowed._ ), and there were no mysterious smell of flowers — of death — mingling in the air with the alcohol, because the bottle is empty, and there is no voice here yelling, _“Watanuki! Sake!”_

Because her lips would never smile that smile anymore, bitter with alcohol and sweet with words beyond imagination, dry with the smoke that made magic happen.

Because the bottle was empty, but it wasn’t the _bottle_ he saw, but her eyes, always a different color, staring at nothing and everything, always so distant, and always so… _Yuuko’s._


End file.
